Southern league 2019: Match review panel to operate in Southern league

After a rough-house 2018 season the Southern league has adopted an AFL-style match review panel and will film all senior matches.

Southern league CEO Lee Hartman.

AN AFL-style match review panel will operate in the Southern league this year as it moves to clean up its game after a rough-house 2018 season.

Senior matches in all four divisions will be filmed as the league sends a message that bad player behaviour won’t be tolerated.

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The MRP will offer set penalties, guided by a table of “grading of offences’’.

It will assess all player reports and have the power to impose or amend penalties.

The panel will also review incidents picked up by the footage and if necessary refer them to the tribunal.

The league’s independent tribunal will still handle more serious reports, as well as those from reserves, women’s, Under 19s and Thirds matches.

“With the filming of every senior game, the new system gives us an opportunity to go through incidents that may have been missed on the weekend and deal with them without having to go through a full investigation process, which is lengthy and costly to the clubs,’’ Southern CEO Lee Hartman said.

“It also gives us the ability to assess all reports from the weekend. Sometimes the umpires do get it wrong, so we can look at those, and there is also the (application) of set penalties.

“We’ve previously had lengthy tribunal cases that have taken up our volunteers’ time — club volunteers and tribunal members — so we can cut that right back with a more consistent approach.’’

The MRP will review all reports captured on vision, and can send them straight to the tribunal, downgrade or even dismiss them.

Clubs and umpires will be able to ask for a review of incidents.

Players can challenge the MRP’s decisions, but if they go to the tribunal and are found guilty their club will be fined $150.

“The match review panel won’t be sitting there on Mondays going through all 16 games looking for reportable incidents,’’ Hartman said.

“It will only have a look at things that are actually referred to it.’’

Match footage will be available to clubs soon after games.

Hartman introduced the MRP in the AFL Barwon region and he said it had cut the number of tribunal by half.

He said Southern clubs supported the concept.

A string of serious on-field incidents blighted the league last year, with one senior match called off before halftime.

Lyndale even took the extraordinary step of forfeiting its finals two games of the season.

“There’s no doubt we’ve had some issues in the past … filming games has been introduced to help with discipline,’’ Hartman said.

“If individuals or clubs want to take on these tactics, we have greater scope now to deal with them.’’

Hartman said the league was keen to appoint five members of the match review panel, as well as a league prosecutor to run tribunal cases and take pressure off umpires presenting and defending their reports.

Clubs will bear most of the cost for having the matches filmed.

The Southern league will no longer be printing a Football Record.

But the league says it will save money by shelving its weekly Football Record and the radio broadcast of the match of the day on Southern FM.

“It’s basically an economic decision,’’ Hartman said of scrapping the Record.

“A lot of the clubs just weren’t selling them, because they don’t have gates. If you’ve got a gate it’s easy to stick one under somebody’s nose, but if you don’t they sit at the canteen. The feedback we got from some clubs was they were being thrown out or not even collected. We also had to pay a resource here (at the league) to put together four Records each week.’’

Hartman said he imagined some clubs would print team lists and make them available to spectators.

He said the league shelled out $21,000 for radio coverage last year.

In its place, a match of the day will be livestreamed.

Meanwhile, Division 1 club St Kilda City has announced that former St Kilda player Raph Clarke has joined fellow ex-Saint Sam Fisher in signing at the Peanut Farm.

*Anyone interested in joining the Southern league match review panel can contact Lee Hartman at [e-mail]